Amazon seeks developer to lead new VR team

Bookseller turned almost-everything-giant Amazon has revealed plans to build its own virtual reality platform, but it appears to have its eyes set on video rather than gaming.

It's no secret that virtual reality is exploding at the moment. Despite extremely high purchase prices, Facebook-owned Oculus VR and smartphone maker HTC both seen incredible demand in pre-orders for their respective virtual reality headsets. While much of the initial focus, too, is on gaming, Facebook in particular has been vocal about supporting other uses for the head-mounted displays including 360-degree films and watching more traditional fixed-frame videos in virtual theatre settings with friends.

It's here that it should be no surprise that Amazon is looking to get involved. The company's Amazon Video platform, offering streaming and downloadable content a subset of which is free for subscribers to its Amazon Prime postage service, is a major part of its focus of late - and if it can find a way to boost revenue with virtual reality support, it would be daft not to take it.

In a job posting first spotted by UploadVR, the company called for a developer to lead a team specifically looking into virtual reality applications within the Amazon Video arm of the company. 'The Virtual Reality team will explore and create the platform and interface for immersive storytelling,' the advert read. 'This will include an ingestion and playback platform for Virtual Reality experiences.'

Thus far, the company has not publicly commented on its plans, nor on whether it is focusing purely on the software side or if it has visions of launching its own VR hardware - much as it did with its range of tablet devices, which run a heavily-customised version of Google's Android designed to funnel all application and media spending into its own wallet.